oh art school...

I found a post I wrote in this blog as a FRESHMAN and some of it still applies to my artmaking. Though at the time I wanted to leave school and go to texas, but that would've been a horrible idea. I'm still at the same school and have taken some really fantastic classes here. The teachers still care about your concept and execution, but instead of criticizing you for not being conceptual, they care more about your vision and what you are trying to achieve, which in my opinion is way more important than the intrinsic meaning behind the work. One of my teachers was a very famous influential video artist, and I think the advice I got from her was best since she knows what she's doing. I don't wanna make art that's just for other people, I want to make art that I WANT to make, and that will make ME happy, first and foremost. If I don't, then what the hell am I doing?

Every brain is different, and not everyone is going to understand my concept. I understand that now. But art school teachers shouldn't be telling me what kind of work to make, they should be giving me suggestions that would be fitting for the kind of work and ideas I'm interested in, which is way more practical.

There's this one class I'm taking right now where I'm having the same problem as in my freshman core classes. The teacher didn't like my first project idea for an installation. I took an old idea I had begun in a performance class and created it into an experience by taking out the performance aspect and leaving the light installation. It had no specific concept at the time, but I guess I just wanted to create an escape for people to get away and forget about life for a while. The first thing my teacher said was "maybe I didn't explain the assignment correctly..." and said that I wasn't supposed to take something I've made before, I had to create something completely new. Which sucks because some of the work I make is based on taking old things I've made and trying new things with them. Which is brilliant for when I have the artist's version of writer's block.

Anyway, we recently had our second crit, and this other guy in my class did the SAME thing that I did for my first project! And EVERYONE loved it. Great.

I showed my piece after that, and everyone loved it too, but the thing is that I didn't really care about it that much. I put very little effort into it, and just made something that my teacher would like, since I was so discouraged by my first crit.

I scheduled a meeting with my teacher and told her what was all bothering me. Basically, she straight out said that the class was more conceptual than technical, and if I take the next level class then I'll learn more of that. I wish I had known this all sooner so I could go back and take a different class, but whatever, I'll tough it out and get the credits.

Oh man... this semester is gonna be interesting.